he's more than a tombstone
by HeartOfCoal
Summary: from prompt: "stay a while, & listen" "His name was William, but I called him Will." there are feels.


Sherlock sat with his legs folded up against his body. The window was open, a cold breeze raising goosebumps on pale skin like ants on a sidewalk as smoke curled out from his lips in a lazy cloud. He know's he shouldn't be smoking; but winter tugged at him in such a way that made the patches just not enough. It was too soon for snow.

It seems like August was yesterday. Seasons played like unfinished compositions in his head. The window above him creaked open; John's room. Sherlock listened to him lean outside and sigh into the night sky. He could almost taste the nightmares from John's breath as it sank down to him; a mix of nicotine and regrets joined fibers and floated up to kiss the moon. If it were another day, another life, Sherlock would have wanted to write about it; but it's not, so instead he listens to John lean against the window frame. Buzzing pulled Sherlock out of liquid dreams.

_You're up late.-JW_

_You're one to talk. -SH_

_Are you smoking?-JW_

Sherlock almost smiled, ashed his cigarette and closed his window.

_No. -SH_

He glanced back at his bed; his sheets were a mess (John wasn't the only one with nightmares) and half off the bed. Darkness fell over the room, spare the dim light from the moon spitting itself across the floor like a desperate whore. The floor was cold under his feet, but his head was warm and his tongue relaxed. Head high- favorite.

His door creaked open. John stood in the doorway, more of the narcissistic moonlight falling onto his feet.

"It smells like smoke in here."

"Must be you," Sherlock said, sitting on the edge of his bed.

Silence took hold. Sighing inwardly, Sherlock leaned back and threw his arm over his head, so that his nose was buried in the nook of his elbow. The side of his bed dipped down. John.

"Why're you up?" he asked.

John sighed. "Sleep is for the weak." _Bad dreams._ "You?"

"I don't sleep."

"Oh, I forgot. You're a robot."

"Obviously."

Sherlock doesn't bother to tell John about the fact that falling asleep terrifies him like nothing else, because he can feel his consciousness falling to messy pieces at his feet. And John doesn't bother to tell Sherlock that he still wakes up chocking on sand and the blood of his friends.

"Have you ever been in love?" John asked, and Sherlock barked a laugh. "What? I want to know."

"That's a long story," Sherlock says, drowsiness starting to bite at his limbs, "and it's late."

"You don't sleep."

"You do."

For a minute, Sherlock peeled his arm back and studied the shadows in the corner of his room. They spill, full of calamity and ideas through the woodwork.

"Tell me. You have, haven't you?"

"Once."

"What happened? Did you poison her?"

Sherlock chuckled.

"Leave a head under the bed?" John takes a second to laugh quietly. "Let's start with her name."

"Will."

"What?"

Arm back over his face, Sherlock swallows hard. "Will. His name was Will."

Silence. "So you're gay?"

"You sound like my father." _Except you say it quietly and without a belt in hand._

"What happened?"

"I was seventeen. He was twenty-two." _He was beautiful._

"Jesus."

"It was the summer that I went away to study overseas, in America. He worked at the bar down the street from my host parents."

"And?"

"We met. We were together. And then I went back home."

"That's it?"

Silence tasted bitter.

"That's it."

_Except the part where I let him fuck me, because it was July and I was so bored and restless and lonely- and the part where we smoked pot for the first time together, and then it moved on to heroin, and he overdosed two weeks before I had to leave. They said it was an accident but he had written me a letter that is still buried under my old self help books, and he said that he couldn't do this anymore and he was sososososo sorry._

_And then he was buried and his tombstone read William. But to me he will always be Will, and that was different from William. 'William' was what his parents called him, and 'Will' was what I called him at 4 am when we were too desperate for another fix to sleep, and I called him Will the night I lost my virginity to him, and I called him Will the night I decided I loved him. But I called him William when I dropped a half ripped letter on his grave before I flew back home, because I couldn't think of Will without thinking of how I memorized the map of his freckles on his back of the curve os his thigh against my own or the sweaty taste of him. _

"I don't believe you." Sherlock tensed. "Tell me the whole story."

"It'll take a while."

"We've got time."

"His name was William… but I called him Will, because…"


End file.
